'Love the Gov.' — Indictment Recounts Rowland's Emailed Sales Pitches

April 12, 2014|Jon Lender, Government Watch

"Love the Gov."

That's how ex-Gov. John G. Rowland signed an email to Republican congressional candidate Mark Greenberg on Oct. 23, 2009 — in the first of several messages that prosecutors say he sent over seven months in hopes of becoming a consultant to Greenberg's 2010 campaign in the 5th District.

Rowland wasn't bashful about mentioning his former office — which he quit in 2004, a year before being jailed for corruption — in pitching Greenberg for what a newly released federal indictment describes as a "a sham consulting contract" that would have paid him secretly for helping Greenberg's campaign.

Rowland depicted himself as still a big man in the district that he'd represented, himself, as a Republican congressman from 1985 to 1991 before he became governor.

"I give you the only chance of winning and that is still going to be hard," Rowland told Greenberg in an email June 1, 2010, according to Thursday's seven-count indictment charging him with conspiring to violate federal campaign laws.

"[W]hat you don't understand is .. if I go with you I am going against alot…of friends from 25 yrs,,…not easy for me to do," Rowland said in the June 1 email, according to the indictment.

Greenberg ultimately refused the contract.

But it wasn't for lack of trying by Rowland, according to the prosecution document — which lays out a series of electronic messages from October 2009 to June 2010 in which Rowland sounds confident and aggressive as he pursues the deal with Greenberg behind the scenes.

It's a different Rowland from the subdued figure who faced a U.S. District Court judge in New Haven Friday and quietly said, "Yes, Your Honor" a dozen times in pleading not guilty to the charges in the indictment. Jury selection for his trial was tentatively scheduled for June 10.

Rowland's pitch to Greenberg was the first of two such efforts, prosecutors say. Both times, prosecutors say, Rowland sought to persuade a Republican 5th District congressional candidate to sign a consulting contract that would hide his role as a paid political adviser by channeling his fees through a non-campaign entity.

In the 2010 election campaign, the indictment says that Rowland proposed that he be paid through a non-profit animal shelter run by Greenberg. Two years later, the indictment says, Republican candidate Lisa Wilson-Foley agreed to Rowland's proposal that he enter a consulting arrangement with her husband's nursing-home business while helping her ultimately unsuccessful 2012 campaign.

The $35,000 in payments that Rowland received under that consulting contract were, in reality, payments from the Wilson-Foley campaign for his political assistance — even though the Wilson-Foley camp said that Rowland was a volunteer helper, the indictment says.

Rowland allegedly wanted to conceal his paid campaign work because of potential negative publicity over his December 2004 conviction for political corruption; he pleaded guilty to accepting more than $100,000 in benefits from businessmen while he was governor from 1995 to mid-2004.

At the time he was being paid by Brian Foley's business and helping the Wilson-Foley campaign, Rowland also was using his role as WTIC-AM radio talk show host to criticize one of Wilson-Foley's opponents on the air. Rowland left his WTIC-AM job April 3, a week before he was indicted.

Wilson-Foley and her husband, Brian Foley, pleaded guilty March 31 to conspiracy charges that could send them to jail for up to a year. Brian Foley has agreed to cooperate in the prosecution of Rowland, saying now that the consulting arrangement with his chain of nursing homes, Apple Rehab, was a sham. But Rowland's lawyer insisted Friday that his client performed "real work" for Foley.

The charges against Rowland carry maximum sentences that potentially add up to decades. If convicted after a trial, the ex-governor realistically could face several years' incarceration — in light of the previous corruption conviction, which sent him to federal prison for 10 months.

The indictment says that Rowland drafted a proposed contract with Greenberg that outlined "fictitious duties that Rowland would perform for the animal shelter." Preparation of such a false contract was intended to "conceal from the [Federal Election Commission] and the United States Department of Justice that payments [under] the fictitious contract [with Greenberg] would, in fact, be for work performed by Rowland on behalf of [Greenberg's] campaign," the indictment says.

Even though Rowland never landed a consulting contract with Greenberg, prosecutors say what he did amounts to criminal activity.

First Pitch

As recounted in the indictment, Rowland's first email pitch to Greenberg was made on Oct. 23, 2009, the same day that the two had a face-to-face meeting at Greenberg's non-profit Simon Foundation animal shelter in Bloomfield.